[gamache]

I spell out some concrete advantages to hypermedia APIs elsewhere in these comments. http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4948652

But to specifically address DHH's arguments from the article:

* Enabling Discovery is a strawman argument; no one expects an API to use / as its only documentation (at least no one expects it of a good API).

* Standardizing API Clients is also a strawman; no one expects to have one generic client magically make sense of any API.

* Comparing HAL to WS-* in order to paint it as committee-driven standards bloat is not fair to HAL, which is an admirably tight and cogent specification.